1/23/06

Patience or Cowardice?

Patience has its limits.Take it too far, and its cowardice.

George Jackson (1941-1971)

This little quote has been quite thought provoking for me this last week. I have always valued patience and felt I was extremely patient. This has never been a problem for me. I occasionally questioned my prolonged patience but always ended up feeling that it was more important for me to feel like I had given the situation every possibility of resolving itself and that I never gave up prematurely on people, projects or objects.

That worked pretty good, even in marriage and other relationships. I never had to look back (except for that one time) and wonder if I had made a mistake to end things. By the time I was ready to "get out"; anything good was well proved to be fictitious or non-existent.

Till I moved to Utah.

In Utah, patience is not a virtue. Of course, Utah is basically virtue-less anyway. I am not kidding.

Since moving here 7 plus years ago, I have had several opportunities to feel that my patience, which was expressed in a relatively, though sometimes hesitantly, benevolent manner somehow transformed itself into a feeling very similar to cowardice.

In a police state like Utah, where "bad language" will get you thrown in the slammer faster than murder, it only compounds the problem. If you decide to take action rather than "endure to the end" (a very holy Mormon concept that only idiot true believers like me would attempt) you would immediately find yourself victimized again by a government that considers any difficulty you might have to be a direct result of your not pleasing God.

In other words, in Utah, if bad things happen to you (murder, rape, robbery, miscarriage, insolvency, etc.) it must be because you are a bad person and deserved it.

I shouldn't be surprised that I am likely considered a bad person in Utah.

I have tattoos and own a tattoo studio. (Evil) I am an ex-Mormon. (EVIL) I operate a ministry that is not Mormon. (Evil) I do charity work that has not been ordered and organized by the local Mormon Bishop. (Evil) I think that violence is bad and sex is good. (Evil) I don't believe in killing or consuming (let others do the killing) innocent beings. (Evil) I don't drink milk. (Evil) I believe the scientists who find that there are thousands of toxic products in our groundwater that make it unfit to drink. (Evil) I am not Republican. (Evil) I believe in equality under the law and am disgusted by special interests. (Evil) I think "Gay" people have the same rights as everyone else and should be treated with respect and have their beliefs respected. (Very Evil) I think that a person does not have to attend church (and more specifically the Mormon Church) to be a good person and have moral values. (Also Very Evil) I don't dress and wear my hair like the current Mormon Leaders. (Evil) I don't believe Jesus is divine. (Now everyone wants to kill me) Additionally, I do believe that ascribing divinity to Jesus destroys his message and mission. (Heads Shaking) They think I'm just too stupid to be evil on that one. Well, I could go on and on. Maybe I will take each of these things and expound on them individually - later.

And this is part of my present issue regarding patience vs. cowardice.

I have been patient. Not wanting to offend my neighbors, clients or relatives. Willing to endure their stupid, insane, disgusting and unsupportable behavior and beliefs and suffer myself and allow my wife and children to suffer along with me, rather than take the chance of offending someone or putting a chip in their carefully maintained facade of belief and purity.

Now, I feel like I have been a coward. Now, I have to say something. I have to take that chance that I might hurt someone’s delicate feelings by telling them that they are ignorant, assholes and hypocrites.

So, in order to not be a hypocrite myself, I must declare that I have decided that I no longer believe it always the case that "patience is a virtue" or that one must "endure to the end".

I am so grateful to be out of the giant Mormon circle jerk. I do believe in ethical and moral behavior (boy am I lonely) but do not believe you need a "religion" to teach it to you or to validate your privilege of holding and practicing such beliefs.

Quite to the contrary. I very much believe that "religion" (the organized sort more especially but not exclusively) severely inhibits ethics and morality.

I haven’t noticed anyone pointing out that Mormonism has its own Jihad going. They believe that everyone in the world MUST become a Mormon (alive or dead) to be acceptable to God and that anyone who isn't interested in becoming a Mormon is evil (kill the blue eyed devils).

Mormonism has its own Taliban, its own enslaved and degraded females and emasculated, yet vicious, rude and downright mean males. Mormonism believes art and artists who do not specifically reflect "current" Mormon preferences to be evil. For example, a couple years ago, during the successful Mormon effort to deny Californian gays of their civil rights, Michelangelo himself was decried as a Pornographer from the steps of the Utah (Mormon) State Capital building. This was repeated for day on all the news channels as if it needed to be "hammered in" to all our consciences (repeating it makes it truer) and amazingly was never denounced or reversed.

In Utah, people who do not support the "Mormon" opinion are told to leave the state. In Utah, clean and sober (straight) teenagers beat people near to death with baseball bats for smoking cigarettes and the victims then hazard arrest if any vulgarity escapes their lips while lying bleeding to death on the sidewalk. Of course no passersby dares to stop and help because, well...if they are beaten and bleeding they must have deserved it and if a person stopped they risk the chance that some of the evil will rub off or one of their neighbors will see them associating with someone who isn't seen at church.

People might wonder how I was able to get my name off the record of the church. No small feat, since the Mormons will not part with any of their precious numbers. My big crime, which kicked me out of God's presence forever? I attended church with neighbors a few of whom practice polygamy and all of whom think it is an essential part of True Mormon practice. Only Mormons, of course, who are literally forbidden to study their own "belief system”, consider it a non-essential element.

To be fair (and again lonely in that) I should point out that I also told my bishop that if and only if God himself told me to practice polygamy would I and that if faced with a doctrinal conflict where I had to choose between believing Gordon Hinkley (the Mormon Church President) and Jesus - I would choose to follow Jesus. Man, talk about branding myself evil - putting Jesus above the "living prophet"! I was just so confused!

So, I didn't get kicked out for any sin or crime beyond having friends the "Church" didn't approve of and having a stronger allegiance to the person the Church is named after instead of its chief earthly administrator.

If Evil truly exists. Mormonism and the culture and government it has established in Utah is it. Hail Satan...er......Utah.

2 comments:

Just read your posting. It's my first time using a "blog" so forgive me if I don't get it. haha But I think your comments were a tad extreme, in that not all Mormons eschew that type of unrealistic, judgmental, close-minded behavior or belief system. As an LDS gal (who is active but haven't always been), I have to disagree that we (us Mormon folk)are all not like you claim. I believe gays deserve to be treated just like any of us, I also wield a tattoo gun (but don't think you or I are going to hell if we use it), and don't think that people outside of my religion/faith or out of Utah are bad (I'm originally from L.A.) All of my sisters are quote/unquote inactive, but so what...there are worse things (like a judgmental, supposing being who is intent on labeling anyone). You made some great points...there are some nazi Mormons out there, but there are some also really good people who just want to enjoy their faith in peace, be good to the people in their lives as well as out of them, and who just want to make the world a better place, period.

Yes, there certainly are some good people who have been fucked over by mormonism. Before I lived in Utah, I would have agreed with you more, but after living here I feel mormonism is about the most evil religion (they are all evil to me) there is. Especially, mormonism, while claiming to help families, mostly destroys them. Now that the church has come out against tattoos so strongly, I wonder how you can both tattoo and be active LDS. How can you get any positions or participate at the temple when you are in "their" words desecrating people's bodies? I'm sure you encourage people to get tattoos - if it's your business. But your prophet discourages tattooing and many Stake and Temple Presidents now refuse temple recommends to people with tattoos even if they got them before they joined the church.For almost 200 years, plus all the thousands of years before, no one had anything to say about tattoos or piercings, but now all of a sudden tattoos and piercings (except one little white pearl earring in each ear - for girls) are evil and a desecration of the body and an insult to God. Of course in Utah, any 13 year old can get a boob job or a tummy tuck or a butt lift, etc. and can get an abortion without parental consent or even knowledge! And Pres. Hinkley has put it in print that while symbolic tattoos are evil (no matter what they symbolize) cosmetic tattooing is just fine. What does that symbolize??? Mormonism stole over 30 years of my life. It ruins so many families and marriages while pretending to make idiot humans into Gods. I think there are a lot of very nice people in Utah, but if they grew up here and/or are mormon they are tainted by the Utah ick no matter how much I wish they weren't.If you "wield a tattoo gun" as you say, I suppose you do it in secret as professional tattooists never refer to their machines as guns.Anyway, I agree with you about letting people enjoy thier beliefs in peace - I wish I could get that same consideration - but it won't happen in Utah. I would like to make the world a better place, but all the mormons want to do is make the whole world mormon.If your comment about being judgemental and labeling is directed my way - I think my intensive mormon experience gives me the right to say whatever the fuck I want about the evils of mormonism and the self-sell-out of mormons. Thank who or whatever that I'm no longer one. While I learned many good things while I was a mormon, most of that is available to anyone from any religion or without religion at all. Goodness is not the property of religion and certainly not mormonism. Tell your bishop that you think it is ok to be gay!

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.Benjamin FranklinOne has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.Martin Luther King

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."Abraham Lincoln

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”James Madison